If you are going to do it, do it right, right?

If you’re going to do it, do it right, right? Do it with me.

George Michael got it right with the Wham song ‘I’m your Man’.

Doing things properly is important, right? No one likes a half done job. Do it right, first time and get on with the rest of your life. But what is right? What do you have to do? What are your motivations and what are the risks?

The human brain is an amazing thing of course. We are faced with thousands of decisions a day and we process quite complicated pros and cons in seconds, based on our knowledge and experience. In a working environment that is usually crucial to the success or failure of the business, because making the wrong decisions wastes time and costs money.

IT recycling is really very simple, as I am continually trying to prove. You have something that is at the end of its useful life with you and you need to dispose of it whilst making sure that none of your data is left on it.

You may not give a fig about the environment but you have to dispose of it properly if you want to avoid a (slim) chance of getting into trouble. I try to be realistic about those risks, but like all risks they do need to be managed.

The risks in my field are losing your data to some unscrupulous fiend in the first instance. It happens all the time. Data breaches are continually cropping up and every now and then the ICO hands out a huge fine and it becomes front page news again, but I promise you, there is enough dodgy data on the market to give you nightmares.

Then there is the environment. If you don’t care, I am not going to convince you otherwise on a little blog I suspect, but if you need one more fact to make you care, consider this. I could collect any number of old computers for free and sell them to Africa or India just like that. Millions of tons of European WEEE go that way every year.

Because in third world country’s they can rebuild anything and make it work for a few more months or use it for parts or whatever. £200 for that pallet of old towers Del Boy and don’t ask where they are going.

And that’s the point of course. On the face of it, letting country’s not as developed as us get more use out of old IT kit is a good thing. But what if ISIS is using an old European PC to do what it does online? And what happens to the kit when it finally breaks down?

It goes into a landfill obviously. And that is what we are trying to avoid.

So just remember that the next time you let some Arthur Daley take your old IT kit away. Do it right and make sure you are not adding to the world’s problems.

Call eReco good, call us bad, call us anything you want to baby, but if you want your IT recycled responsibly whilst keeping your data safe, I’m your Man.